RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270563/my-attendance-rally-palestine-hugh-fitzgerald

I recently attended a Rally for Palestine in the main square of a medium-sized French city close to Marseille. There were flags aflutter of the State of Palestine, two booths full of anti-Zionist propaganda, French middle-aged leftists, committed to the cause, concolorous in their political views with their American cousins of circa 1970, all granola and granny glasses. There were pamphlets of testimonies by “Palestinians” describing the unbelievable behavior of the Zionists, when they started the 1948 war, and then the 1956 Sinai war, and then the 1967 war, and the 1973 war, and several wars made on the peaceful citizens of Gaza — all entirely unprovoked attacks by the monstrous Israelis. There were flags of Palestine for sale. There were photographs of Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas. There was something — I couldn’t make out the title — by Noam Chomsky. But what attracted my attention the most were the four outline maps of “Palestine” that were spread out on the ground, depicting an ever-expanding seizure of Arab land by the Zionist “settlers.”

The first map of “Palestine” showed it in 1946 as almost entirely Arab, with a handful of diminutive Jewish islands in an Arab sea.

The other three maps told a tale of inexorable Zionist expansion. The second map showed Palestine according to the U.N. Partition Plan of 1947. Palestine is still overwhelmingly Arab, but with a little more land area — still discontinuous bits — than in the 1946 map, assigned to the Jews. Then a map showing Israel just before, and then just after, the Six-Day War. No discussion of what caused the Six-Day War. No display of the Sinai as part of the territory Israel won in that war, or mention of how it was given back to Egypt by the Israelis.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/mexico-what-went-wrong-economy-based-on-exporting-poor-people/

Mexico gets a massive cash influx in remittances, American corporations get cheap labor, Democrats get voters . . .

Mexico in just a few days could elect one of its more anti-American figures in recent memory, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

Obrador has often advanced the idea that a strangely aggrieved Mexico has the right to monitor the status of its citizens living illegally in the United States. Lately, he trumped that notion of entitlement by assuring fellow Mexicans that they have a “human right” to enter the United States as they please. For Obrador, this is an innate privilege that he promised “we will defend” — without offering any clarification on the meaning of “defend” other than to render meaningless the historic notion of borders and sovereignty.

Obrador went on to urge his fellow Mexicans to “leave their towns and find a life in the United States.” He has naturally developed such a mindset because he assumes as normal what has become, by any fair standard, a historically abnormal relationship.

Obrador is determined to perpetuate, if not enhance, the asymmetry. In the age of Trump, Obrador also reasons that the furor and hysteria of the American media toward the president represents a majority and a domestic grassroots pushback against the Trump administration — apparently because of Trump’s “restrictionist” view of enforcing existing immigration law. Polls, however, suggest otherwise, despite their notorious embedded anti-Trump bias.

http://carolineglick.com/europe-seeks-to-pin-down-president-trump-and-america/

National Security Advisor John Bolton said last Wednesday that while discussion of President Donald Trump’s decision to leave the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has centered on the administration’s revulsion with its institutional anti-Israel bias, the move was really about restoring American control over U.S. foreign policy.

In his words: “We did talk about Israel [in setting out our reasons for leaving the UNHRC] because it’s singled out unfairly. But in many respects, Israel is, as the saying goes, ‘the canary in the mine shaft’ for the United States. Countries that attack Israel do so because they think it’s easier, but much of their criticism is really aimed at us.”

Bolton added, “Getting off of the council is an assertion of America’s determination to stick to its Constitution and not to recognize that there’s some ‘higher authority’ at the UN … to judge our performance or to give us advice on how to implement the constitution … That’s what this is about: self-government.”

The Trump administration’s determination to restore American power and independence in the international arena places it on a collision course with the European Union, whose perspective on the proper goal of international affairs is diametrically opposed to the administration’s.

American power abroad rests on military and economic power. Since the end of the Second World War, Europe has been militarily dependent on the U.S.

Rather than build their own military power to secure their interests and enable them to play a leading role in world affairs, European leaders have based their international position on their power as a voting bloc in international and transnational institutions, and on their collective financial power.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12522/canada-jihadis

The Canadian government is willing to go to great (and presumably costly) lengths to “facilitate” the return of Canadian jihadists, unlike the UK, for example, which has revoked the citizenship of ISIS fighters so they cannot return.

Attempts at deradicalization elsewhere have frequently turned out to be ineffective. In the UK, for example, a new government report shows that the vast majority of deradicalization programs are not only ineffective, but even counterproductive, and that those tasked with executing the programs “…would refuse to engage in topics over fears of bringing up matters of race and religion without appearing discriminatory”

In France, the country’s first and only deradicalization center closed in September 2017 after just one year, without having “deradicalized” a single individual. On the contrary, three participants reportedly behaved as if the center were a “Jihad academy”.

Canadians who go abroad to commit terrorism – predominantly jihadists, in other words – have a “right to return” according to government documents obtained by Global News. They not only have a right of return, but “… even if a Canadian engaged in terrorist activity abroad, the government must facilitate their return to Canada,” as one document says.

According to the government, there are still around 190 Canadian citizens volunteering as terrorists abroad. The majority are in Syria and Iraq, and 60 have returned. Police are reportedly expecting a new influx of returnees over the next couple of months.

The Canadian government is willing to go to great (and presumably costly) lengths to “facilitate” the return of Canadian jihadists, unlike the UK, for example, which has revoked the citizenship of ISIS fighters so they cannot return. The Canadian government has established a taskforce, the High Risk Returnee Interdepartmental Taskforce, that, according to government documents:

“… allows us to collectively identify what measures can mitigate the threat these individuals may pose during their return to Canada. This could include sending officers overseas to collect evidence before they depart, or their detention by police upon arrival in Canada.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12599/turkey-election-results

Despite Erdoğan’s clear victory, his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) performed worse than expected.

Erdoğan may not be too happy having to share power.

The national joy over the re-election of a man known best to the rest of the world for his authoritarian, sometimes despotic rule, is not surprising in a country where average schooling is a mere 6.5 years.

Millions of anti-Erdoğan Turks are now terrified of the prospect of further torment under an Islamist-nationalist coalition show run by a president with effectively no checks and balances.

Nothing could have better explained the Turks’ joy over their president’s election victory on June 24 than a cartoon that depicts a cheering crowd with three lines in speech balloons: “It was a near thing,” one says. “We would almost become free.” And the last one says: “Down with freedoms!”

Turkey’s Islamist strongman, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, won 52.5% of the national vote in presidential elections on June 24. That marks a slight rise from 51.8% he won in presidential elections of August 2014. More than 25 million Turks voted for Erdoğan’s presidency. His closest rival, social democrat Muharrem Ince, an energetic former schoolteacher, won less than 16 million votes, or nearly 31% of the national vote.

The opposition candidate admitted that the election was fair. There have been no reports of fraud from international observers, at least so far.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270555/sweden-open-business-bruce-bawer

I try to be careful about these things, so I won’t give a thumbs-up – yet – to the new party Alternativ für Sverige. I want to know more about them. That said, the party leader, Gustav Kasselstrand, is saying all the right things. “What you read about Sweden on alternative news platforms is true,” he told an interviewer recently. “We are facing problems more severe than ever before in our history, where Swedes face a situation of being a minority within 20 years if nothing is done to stop the replacement of our people.” He added: “I would describe the problems in Sweden as some kind of low-intensive civil war (with gradually increasing intensity for each day).”

While I’m not yet sure what to make of Kasselstrand and his party, I do know what to make of the establishment they’re taking on. It’s a gang of liars. Case in point: recently the Council for the Promotion of Sweden Abroad – a joint effort by Sweden’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation, Ministry of Culture, the Swedish Institute, Business Sweden and Visit Sweden – distributed a manual, Sharing Sweden, which explains to Swedish entrepreneurs how to attract tourism, business development, investment, trade, “cultural and scientific exchange,” and the like. The thrust is to project a “strong image of Sweden abroad.” This, admits the Council, is not easy nowadays, because, and I quote, “Sweden has been affected in recent years by negative rumours and in some cases outright disinformation, particularly in the areas of migration and integration.”

“Negative rumours”? “Outright disinformation”? Translation: the horrifying truth about our national mess of an immigration and integration policy has gotten out, and if we want to attract vacationers, investors, etc., we’ve got to double down on the denial.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/25th-american-sickened-by-mysterious-attacks-on-u-s-diplomats-in-cuba-china/

Another U.S. diplomat has been confirmed to be suffering from the same ill health effects as embassy personnel sickened by mysterious attacks in Cuba and China.

The State Department first heard about the incidents in late 2016 and news broke last summer that they believed a sonic device outside the range of audible sound was targeted at the residences of U.S. diplomats, operating either inside or outside their homes. Officials have been investigating whether a third country looking for “payback” against the U.S. was involved, possibly with the assistance of Cuban security services. Those affected suffered “cognitive, vestibular, and oculomotor dysfunction, along with auditory symptoms, sleep abnormalities, and headache,” and were left with conditions including mild traumatic brain injury and permanent hearing loss.

Press secretary Heather Nauert said last August that the U.S. personnel were being treated and “the incidents are no longer occurring.”

The first medically confirmed case since August, learned by the State Department late this morning, brings the total of affected members of the diplomatic community in Havana up to 25.

On June 21, Nauert told reporters at today’s State Department briefing, “following a comprehensive medical evaluation, one U.S. diplomat working at the U.S. Embassy Havana was medically confirmed to have experienced health effects similar to those that were reported by members of the U.S. Havana diplomatic community.”

The Cuban government was notified of the “occurrence,” she said, on May 29 and “assured us that they will continue to take this seriously and are continuing their investigation.”

“We strongly remind the Cuban government of its responsibility under the Vienna Convention to protect our diplomats.”

One other potentially affected employee who was also medically evacuated to the United States is still being evaluated at this time.

Nauert confirmed that a “number of individuals have returned to the United States from China” for medical testing of their symptoms and “some of them still do remain under evaluation at this point.”

“From China, we have one medically confirmed case at this point — one medically confirmed case. It does not mean that that number won’t change, but that is where it stands at this time,” she said. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/06/sultan_erdogan_invincible_and_doomed.html

By far the most interesting thing about Sunday’s Turkish elections was the endless speculations by pundits left and right about what would happen if Recep Tayyip Erdoğan were to lose. These clueless if numerous pontificators forgot to ask themselves a simple question: when was the last time an Islamist dictator in full control of state power lost an election? Mindless as they are, these idle meditations have little to tell us about Turkey but a lot about the West’s (and Europe’s, especially) failure or unwillingness to understand what Erdoğan is and is all about. For NATO and the West, the inevitable harsh payment due is just around the corner.

In the meantime, Turkey has a new sultan who can and will do whatever he seemingly wants – except that the time of sultans is long past, and this one is preprogrammed for failure.

In the old Ottoman days, upon the anointment of the new sultan, all male pretenders were dispatched with a silken cord. Now they are simply put in jail as “terrorists.” In the old days, all the sultan had to do was run to the largely ignorant ulema to be told why introducing the printing press is a great sacrilege, but it took centuries for the empire to become the “sick man of Europe” and a technological and military anachronism. Today, the sultan is forced to dispatch his flunkies to the captains of finance in London to explain why raising the despised interest rates sharply will calm the markets and to plead for continued funds flow.

Herein lies the new sultan’s ineluctable vulnerability and the cause of his inevitable demise. A dyed-in-the-wool Islamist, he depends for the very economic survival of the obscurantist polity he is building on the hated Western secular society and markets. Take away his privileges as a member of the European Customs Union, and Turkey becomes but a run-of-the-mill Middle Eastern satrapy. It is a match made in Islamist Hell, and that is where it will end. Unlike with the old Ottoman empire, a version of which he is trying to recreate, it will not take long.

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/bois-debene-slave-trade-replay/

Fake news, fake metaphors, fake emotions, real human trafficking

Bois d’ébène…it’s the French expression for the slave trade — ebony-black human beings stacked like wood, loaded into the stinking hold and shipped across the seas to serve as slave labor. Today, the image is replayed before the eyes of the world. But the clearly visual reality is twisted into a Shoah narrative. The St. Louis desperately roaming the seas in search of a safe harbor. We were wrong then, we sent the Jews to their death, so we will be right now, and give refuge to these new Jews streaming out of Africa.

And the slave ship is called the Aquarius! No, it isn’t the dawning of an age of peace & love. No, it has nothing to do with six million European Jews trapped in the killing fields, all doors closed to them, including the Gates of Palestine. No, these are not refugees fleeing war in Syria. Look at them! See their black-is- beautiful cargo. In this modern age of Equal Opportunity Intl. the slave traders aren’t cruel white men. They’re dark or black….perhaps Muslim? CNN did an excellent undercover report on the way these Africans are treated by the slave traders in Libya. The women are systematically and repeatedly raped. The men are beaten and tortured. Some are sold into slavery there, others shipped to Europe and who cares what becomes of them? Families pay a fortune to send one member to Europe. But once the poor souls get to Libya, the evil dealers blackmail the families, demand more money to the tune of their victims’ screams, and credible death threats against those back home.